Showing results by narrator "Pam Ward" in All Categories

"With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh, and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology that appeals to streetfighters and intellectuals alike? That is overtly macho in style, yet attracts many women? That calls for a return to tradition while maintaining a fascination with technology? And that preaches violence in the name of an ordered society? In the new edition of this Very Short Introduction, Kevin Passmore brilliantly unravels the paradoxes of one of the most important phenomena in the modern world

Following the trail of an unexpected family connection, acclaimed journalist Pam Fessler has unearthed the lost world of the patients, nurses, doctors, and researchers at Carville who struggled for over a century to eradicate Hansen's disease, the modern name for leprosy. Amid widespread public anxiety about foreign contamination and contagion, patients were deprived of basic rights - denied the right to vote, restricted from leaving Carville, and often forbidden from contact with their own parents or children.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of America's financial center into a war zone. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation.

As America begins to come to terms with the costs of White privilege to Black lives, this book urges a soul-searching examination of the role American Christianity has played in sustaining everyday white supremacy by assuring White people of their innocence. In Mormonism and White Supremacy, Joanna Brooks offers an unflinching look at her own people's history and culture and finds in them lessons that will hit home for every scholar of American religion and person of faith.

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.

Jennifer McGaha never expected to own a goat named Merle, or to be rescuing opossums from her barn and calling it "date night." When Jennifer discovered that she and her husband owed back taxes - a lot of back taxes - her world changed. Now desperate to save money, they foreclosed on their beloved suburban home and moved their family to a 100-year-old cabin in a North Carolina holler. Soon enough, Jennifer's life began to more closely resemble the lives of her Appalachian ancestors than the life she experienced in her middle class upbringing.

Harness the power of your emotions as you gain insight into why you react so strongly to the difficult people in your life. You may have come from a dysfunctional family, work for or with dysfunctional people, or live in a dysfunctional household. But you do not have to be dysfunctional! Learn how to stop playing the victim and start living as the victor. Living Successfully With Screwed-Up People shows you how.

In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple worldview: What "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory.

We all know someone who is dissatisfied with their career but feels trapped in their current trajectory. What's not always clear is how they got there, or, more importantly, how we can avoid the same fate as we develop our own careers. In a competitive job market, we need concrete, field-tested advice to help us ace the interview, land the job, and launch a career we love. Enter Dee Ann Turner. After more than three decades leading teams and coaching staff members at Chick-fil-A, she knows what it takes to build a fulfilling career.

This book is a dialogue between two spiritual seekers - one a Trappist monk and the other a married professional woman. It is two people "stuttering to articulate life's universal questions from diverse contexts and perspectives."

Originally published in 1978, A Step Further is Joni Eareckson Tada's response to thousands of letters she received from people puzzled about the "whys" of suffering. Joni answers these questions by taking a personal look at how God has used circumstances, people, and events in her own life and the lives of others.

Demons wage war against families because families are vital to God's plan of salvation. This stark reality requires that your family members become well-trained spiritual warriors who actively secure your home and fight to keep it off-limits to demonic activity. Kathleen Beckman offers you potent advice from her 12 years of active participation on an exorcist's team. She shows you how to clean up your household by cultivating in your family a civilization of love - and how to withstand the spiritual attacks that inevitably come to destroy the harmonious family life you create.

When a waiting world learned on April 12, 1955, that Jonas Salk had successfully created a vaccine to prevent poliomyelitis, he became a hero overnight. Born in a New York tenement, humble in manner, Salk had all the makings of a 20th-century icon - a knight in a white coat. In the wake of his achievement, he received a staggering number of awards and honors; for years his name ranked with Gandhi and Churchill on lists of the most revered people.

In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. But China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy.

When her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair.

Loneliness knows no season. It can strike during times of busyness and a full social calendar just as easily as it can when plans are canceled and friends are far off. And we may be surprised just how common loneliness is among our friends, family, and colleagues. But it isn't inevitable and it isn't forever. As a single adult for many years, Ruth Graham understands loneliness.

Impromptu shows leaders how to think on their feet and respond eloquently in every situation. Never have there been so many opportunities to inspire and influence in everyday situations - elevator chats, corridor conversations, networking gatherings, meetings, and ceremonial events. Indeed, today the most iconic leadership moments are spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment events that reveal the inner workings of the leader's mind. When these impromptu opportunities arise, leaders must be able to listen, think, and respond within seconds.

The year 1916 was not shaping up to be a good one for Alafair Tucker, and finding Bernie Arruda dead in a ditch didn’t help matters. Alafair had not wanted to go to Arizona in the first place. But her 10-year-old daughter, Blanche, was suffering from a stubborn ailment of the lungs, and her best chance for a cure was dry desert air. So Alafair and her husband, Shaw, had bundled their sick child onto the train and made the difficult trip from Oklahoma to the home of Alafair’s sister in Tempe, Arizona.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.